House Commerce Committee GOP leaders urged review of burdensome regulations at the FCC and other independent agencies. Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., sent a letter late Wednesday to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The Republicans want the FCC to follow a January executive order by President Barack Obama to report to the White House about regulations that might be removed (CD June 6 p8), and Chairman Julius Genachowski has said he will do so. “In recent correspondence with the Federal Communications Commission, the committee has stressed the importance of eliminating burdensome regulations that no longer serve the public interest,” the GOP chairmen wrote. “A thorough review of FCC and other independent agency regulations and the repeal of outdated rules will unleash private sector investment, spur growth, and create jobs for the American people. While independent agencies like the FCC are not required to conduct a regulatory review under the terms of the executive order, you testified that you hoped they would voluntarily agree to do so.” The chairmen asked Sunstein what efforts the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has made to encourage independent agencies to follow the executive order, which they are not required to follow. They also asked what communications Sunstein has had with the FCC regarding its regulatory review. The Republicans asked him to reply by July 6.
Democrats and Republicans voiced deep philosophical disagreements at a hearing Wednesday on FCC reform proposals designed to rein in the agency’s rules and conditions on deals. The House Communications Subcommittee did find agreement on some areas, including removing the prohibition on commissioners meeting privately. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., circulated a discussion draft Friday that’s spurred significant debate (CD June 22 p1).
The FCC should give native tribes priority in allocating and licensing spectrum, create a special “Native Nations Broadband Fund” and take on a “tribal-centric” view of economic development, Native American groups said in comments in docket 11-41. The National Congress of American Indians, Native Telecom Coalition for Broadband, National Tribal Telecommunications Association, American Library Association and Alexicon Telecommunications Consulting endorsed some form of a broadband fund for tribes. “The FCC must take extraordinary measures to provide parity of communications service with non-Native communities,” the Tribal Telecom Association said in a joint filing with the Gila River Telecommunications Association. “Since the passage of the 1996 Telecom Act, only three Native governments have attained full regulatory self-provisioning [eligible telecommunications carrier] status.”
Proposed FCC “reform” legislation may “undermine” the Administrative Procedure Act and the Communications Act, Democrats on the House Commerce Committee said in a minority memo circulated Tuesday. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., circulated a draft bill Friday (CD June 21 p7) to let three or more commissioners meet privately, set shot clocks on agency actions and require the FCC to provide greater justification for new regulations and transaction conditions. The subcommittee has a hearing Wednesday on the draft.
Early reviews are mixed on draft FCC process reform legislation circulated Friday by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. The subcommittee has a hearing Wednesday on the draft bill. Among its provisions, the draft would allow three or more commissioners to meet behind closed doors, would set shot clocks on agency actions and require the FCC to provide greater justification for new regulations and transaction conditions.
The Obama administration is fully committed to getting legislation through Congress funding a national wireless broadband network for first responders, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday during a speech at the Old Executive Office Building. Biden shared the stage with Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, among other top officials, in a high-profile push for public safety broadband.
Six more power companies have joined the fray over the FCC’s pole attachment order. Calling themselves the “Coalition of Concerned Utilities,” Consumers Energy, Detroit Edison, FirstEnergy, Hawaiian Electric, NSTAR and Pepco filed a petition to reconsider the April order. The coalition said it has concerns over make-ready deadlines, public safety and “issues” over attacher rearrangements, joint pole ownership and refunds. “All of the Coalition’s members, like other electric utilities across the country, are responsible for the safe and efficient delivery of electric services to their consumers. None is in a position to sacrifice electric system safety and reliability as a cost of making its distribution poles available on an expedited basis for use by communications attachers. The Coalition urges the Commission to reconsider its rules accordingly,” the group said in a filing released Friday on dockets 07-245 and 09-51. The commission has already declined a request to reconsider the order and other utility companies are already suing in federal court to overturn the rules (CD June 3 p1).
AT&T and T-Mobile made their case for why the FCC should approve their proposed merger in a 229-page “joint opposition” to the dozens of petitions filed by merger opponents last month (CD June 2 p4). Support for the merger is wide and deep and the deal is critical to getting AT&T the spectrum it needs going forward as demand for wireless continues to accelerate, AT&T argues. The filing invokes the name of the primary opponent of the merger, Sprint Nextel, more than 370 times, compared to, for example, only 35 times for Free Press and 17 for Public Knowledge.
A federal appeals court largely affirmed an FCC order asserting its program access rules over vertically-integrated and terrestrially delivered programming. But it vacated a part of the rule closing some of the “terrestrial loophole” that labeled some acts of withholding such programming as categorically unfair. That step was arbitrary and capricious, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found in Cablevision v. FCC. The decision led both proponents and critics of the rule to claim victory. “As we've said all along, and as this court reinforced, given the local and regional nature of terrestrial programming, such exclusives can be highly pro-competitive,” Cablevision said. Verizon, AT&T, USTelecom and Consumers Union praised the decision for affirming the FCC’s authority over terrestrially-delivered programming.
The FCC will eliminate remaining traces of the Fairness Doctrine from agency rules, Chairman Julius Genachowski said this week. “I fully support deleting the Fairness Doctrine and related provisions from the Code of Federal Regulations, so that there can be no mistake that what has been a dead letter is truly dead,” Genachowski wrote House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich, on Monday. Upton had asked Genachowski to kill four FCC rules in the code related to the doctrine (CD June 1 p16). Responding to Genachowski on Wednesday, Upton and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., asked the FCC chairman “when precisely” the rules would be eliminated and if he had support from other commissioners. They sought a response by Friday. Also in Genachowski’s letter, he said the agency has killed 49 outdated regulations and targeted “25 sets of unnecessary data collections for elimination.” He attached a list of existing statutory mandates in the Communications Act that “appear unnecessary.” The House Republicans said they would include Genachowski’s suggestions in future “clean up” legislation. Upton and Walden also asked Genachowski when the FCC would submit a plan to the Office of Management and Budget for eliminating other outdated rules in accordance with President Barack Obama’s January executive order. As an independent agency, the commission isn’t required to follow the executive order, but Upton and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., have proposed requiring such compliance (CD June 6 p8).